The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1887-05-25
Ehuoafe the Masses,

he was poo. scribe. Yea some wise ed
itors in North Carolina oppose tho Blair
| bill for the education of tho poor litter
aLes. Ignorance breeds crime, therefore
! let us have school house OH every hill
, top. p."-,NclGy -IHrOru.
! cleveland made u bad showing. Put is
! il true that "ignorance'' produced the
| crime? If so, how is it that there are
| five times as much crime in, Massachu-
setls to-day among the PEOPLE 80. here q"
aulong the whitpx in North Carolina? j,
the school house the great panacch-the
eternal cure-all for crime? So thought
the able Horace Mann. But his own
State, Massachusetts, gives Overwhelming
evidence to prove that education docs not
prevent or lessen necessarily crime.
What are the facts? The .Sinr has
again and again presented them. as
late as March 9th and 10Th last it gave
facts and figures that knock the bottom
out of all editorials like that OF the h~-
r0rd. There are more saloons to popnla-
ton in Boston than anywhere in the
South. Mr.. StctSon, Massachusetts
writer, has shown that there vas one to
every l25 persons.
Mr.. Stctson also showed that there was
one arrest in Boston for every II! per-
sons. That is to say there was one ar
rest for every four Of the voters. Awful
Is not Massachusetts good missionary
ground? And yet Massachusetts has
| had and has now the best possible conf
mon school system and education has
not prevented or cured crime
Mi Stetson, In his remarkable paper
on "Iteracy and Crime" shows beyond
all question that crime is dLrcddy OIL the
increase. His figures show that as re-
formatory agent and preventative OF
crime education of the intellect is trc-
menduous failure. We copy from our
own editorial in the jTar Of the 10th OF
| March:
an 1S5G-even years before the war
the population was 9s4,5l4; in 1880, it
| l.7S3, ,OS5. In 1850, the number of persons
| in the prisons CT the State was l,236, or
| in every l04 inhabitants; in 1880, there
were 1858 persons in prison, or in ey-
ery 4S7 of the population. According to
population there were nearly twice as
many criminals in 1880 as there were in
1850.
"Now mark the facts. The mntire
criminal population has mar" than doub-
led in thirty wears. This too III the face
Of sour system Of obstruction. our
churches, .lir charitable institutions, and
all the educational efforts and appliances
known a. innlrrn rivilizali"m.' In lS."'
over ne-lIalf of the criminals were 'ia-
! tive born; in iSSJ, over two thirds were
of this class.
"But further, in the entire State in 1880,
there was one arrest for every - persons,
or one for every six families"
( III the same editorial we gave The di-
vor:c statistics. We showed from the
figures that there was a great increase OF
crimes against chastity, and mark. the
increase was much greater among the No.
tee born citizens, than among the foreign
born, the figures being Gj to 81 per cent.
| Massachusetts has very "high rank
in lileracy," as Mr.. StetS0n says, hut then
he SAYS, and it is Il fearful admission, that
this superior grade Of education is Gccom-
Dnnied by great dccddencc in pnbHc
aaoruls. So education is not great re-
generator, litter up. purifier, preventive,
panacca. One fact is worth million the
ories. We put the facts furnished by
Massachusetts against all the fine-spun
theories Of all the "wise editors" who go
it blind for the Blair bill.
Blair's own State, New Hampshire, Is
not doing as well in educational matters
as several of the Southern States arc do
ing.
Now for another fact twice presented in
these columns. The son of one OF the
most prominent Of the old-time Aboll-
tion:sts hse twice visited Wilmington.
On both occasions we held a long CONVEX
sation with him. On his last visit-somo
years ago-he told us this. He said he
had visited every pententiary south ol
North Carolina and he made it his special
business to Inquire into the condition ot
the vonn1 convicts. He said he was
shocked to find that more than half could
read ard write. In fact, he thought about
! two-thirds of the y0U1'g cGncicts were
able to read. He said :li,s satisfied H.. I
that mere &cbOoIing would not keep tie
negroes from crime and the penitentiary.
! The Rlar bill is extremely Unwise and
unconstitutional. This has heen shown
thousand times. \ wiser man than
any of our North Carolina editors, OK
Speaker james G.. Carlisle, of Kentucky,
SAID a few days ago:
"Now let us look for a moment ut the
hill providing fer Federal aid to eilra-
uration. It's effects must be apparent 10
every intelligent observer. Promoters
Of that scheme say that the Federal ap-
rropriations would not continue longer
than eight years. 7 say-uncc begun
they would continue fora thousand years,
and why? The reason is plain-thc ccr-
tain effect of Federal aid would he the
decentralization and ultimately the de-
Struci0n of our State systems OF cducl-
ton. At the end CT eight years tho States
would he entirely dependent on the Cen
oral Government for m educational fund
and Federal aid would then be Il ncccs.
Sity from which there would he no escape.
.nfI